A Long View on Girls’ Futures: Carl Manlan Joins Be That Girl as Senior Advisor
Zurich (Switzerland), 25 February 2026 - Luca Carlomagno, Communication Manager at the Be That Girl Foundation, speaks with Carl Manlan, an international development leader whose career spans global health, financial inclusion, and African philanthropy, and who is now joining the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) as Chief Partnership and Business Development Officer.
The conversation explores Manlan’s decision to join Be That Girl as a Senior Advisor, as well as to transition into agriculture in his new role at Accra, after more than two decades working across multilateral institutions, private philanthropy, and financial services. He reflects on agriculture as “the original family business” and examines what inclusive agricultural transformation requires - stronger value chains, reduced post-harvest loss, improved nutrition, and expanded opportunities for women across logistics, marketing, and food systems leadership.
As Senior Advisor to the Be That Girl Foundation, Carl will contribute to the organisation’s long-term strategy to support girls’ education, mentorship, and women’s economic agency. Together, Carlomagno and Manlan discuss the conditions under which private philanthropy can deliver sustainable impact, the limitations of empowerment narratives, and the importance of recognising informal economic systems as foundations for financial inclusion.
Across themes of mentorship, leadership, and systems change, the conversation makes the case for investing in girls and women not as beneficiaries, but as economic actors whose agency is central to long-term, multi-generational development outcomes across the African continent.
I. Background
Luca from BTG:
After heading Ecobank foundation and being Vice-President of Impact at Visa, you are now starting a new role as Chief Partnerships and Business Development at AGRA, an organisation that aims to contribute to a food system-inspired inclusive agricultural transformation across Africa, to reduce hunger, improve nutrition and adaptation to climate change. Why did you pick this new challenge and what do you find most exciting about it?
Carl:
Sometimes, opportunities come your way, and those opportunities make you ask yourself three very simple questions. The first is: what can I learn? The second is: what can I contribute? And the third is: will I be able to make an impact?
When I looked at this role through that lens, the answer to all three questions was yes.
But most importantly, when you study economics, you begin to realise that productivity, labour, and people’s ability to feed themselves are absolutely critical to the transformation of any society.
Having worked across different sectors - health, financial services - I see this as a very natural next step. When you think about health, nutrition is really at the centre of it. And when you think about financial inclusion, smallholder farmers have to be part of the digital economy. So for me, agriculture is the space where all of these issues come together, and it allows me to bring many of the things I’ve learned over the years into one area of work.
What really excites me is the opportunity to better understand the journey of the smallholder farmer - how they move from small-scale operations to medium-sized enterprises, and potentially even larger ones - by applying the same principles we use when working with small businesses.
If we frame it differently, a smallholder farmer is essentially a small business. They share the same characteristics as any other enterprise; we just don’t usually think about it that way. I recently had a conversation with leaders of business schools, and I asked them: what do you see as the original family business? Not many thought about agriculture. But for me, agriculture is the original family business.
Wherever you go in the world, you will find a farmer. So I am genuinely excited about starting to shift the narrative around smallholder farmers - thinking of them as the original family business - and exploring how we can apply what we already know about family businesses globally to better support them.
Luca from BTG:
This new role means you are moving back to Africa after a long time, with your young family. What do you wish for the experience of living on the continent to deliver for your children?
Carl:
For me, it’s about being grounded and understanding where you come from - although where you come from is actually quite a fluid idea.
I was born in West Africa, and I now spend much of my time outside the region where I grew up. My children have already lived in West Africa and in Southern Africa, and now they have the opportunity to live in East Africa, which is a very different part of the continent.
Experiencing these different regions at this stage of their lives - when they’re eleven and thirteen, when you start to form a stronger sense of identity - will help them understand who they are, where they belong, and how they relate to the world around them.
For me, the opportunity to step into a different role comes at a very interesting moment in their development. Over the past four years or so, I’ve been closely observing how they’ve grown up while living in the UAE, being exposed to so many different cultures. It will be fascinating to see how they transition into living in a place where there are more Africans around them - where they see more people who look like them - and what that does to their understanding of who they are and how they relate to their peers.
In that sense, it’s an exciting time, because we’re going to be learning together. When we moved to the UAE in 2021, it was a new city and a new country for all of us. Of course, we were at different ages, but we all had to learn what it meant to change, to transform, to adapt in a new place with a different culture. Exactly the same thing is going to happen again.
We’ve had the chance to explore the city together, visit different schools and neighbourhoods, and it’s been interesting to see their reaction as they start to imagine what this new life might look like. Ultimately, it’s about learning - and learning together as a family.
Luca from BTG:
I’ve been an immigrant myself. Moving from the UAE to East Africa - and then wherever comes next - must be an incredibly enriching way to grow up.
Carl:
It really is - and I completely agree with you. My father moved a lot, but we stayed in the same place, and I only moved when I was nineteen. I haven’t lived in my country since I was nineteen.
So when people ask me where home is, I usually say: home is where my pillow is. If my pillow is in Cape Town today, that’s home. If it’s in Dubai, that’s home. If it’s in Nairobi, then that’s home.
That idea of being attached to a place has become a little foreign to me, because I move almost every three to four years. So where is home? I make friends along the way, but because I don’t stay long enough in any one place, I end up knowing people across different parts of the world.
And it’s funny - when we were in Nairobi recently, we went to Village Market, and we bumped into so many people I knew. And my friends who were hosting us were like, “But we’re the ones living in Nairobi - you’re visiting.” And I said, “Yes, but I’ve crossed so many industries over the past twenty-one years that I know people from all these years.”
Luca from BTG:
Great. You just wrote your first book of poetry. What led you to this new endeavour and how did it feel to put words and emotions down into the book? Is there any relation between this endeavour and your career in development?
Carl:
They are all connected - because we tend to think of our lives as separate buckets. You know: I am a professional, I am a father, I am a husband, and so on and so forth. But I reached a point where I wanted everything about me to be connected - where it all follows who I am, rather than being separated into compartments.
And I think the book has been sitting in me for many years - just in a different format - because I didn’t think I would write poetry. That wasn’t my initial idea.
But earlier this year, in February, I attended a writers’ workshop in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, as part of the San Miguel de Allende Writers’ Festival. And while I was there, I took a workshop on grief. It was led by a Judyth Hill - she’s a poet and also an instructor.
We had to talk about grief and what that experience has been for each one of us. There were around ten or fifteen people around the table, each sharing their story. But there was a man whose story really stayed with me.
He spoke about the dilemma he faces every time he introduces himself. When he says he has three daughters, people expect to see all three thus has to explain. When he says he has two daughters, he feels like he’s betraying the memory of the daughter he lost.
I listened to that and thought: grief is something we all share. All of us. You lose your girlfriend, your wife, your partner - there is always an element of grief. And I lost both of my parents over the past twenty-one years.
The next day after that workshop, I started writing about my experience of grief. I arrived there thinking I would write a memoir. I left San Miguel having started a poetry collection.
Because it suddenly dawned on me: grief is probably the one thing we share equally, regardless of race, religion, or where you are in the world. We all share it - yet we do not speak about it.
So for me, that poetry collection is an invitation to speak about grief. Because you can only grieve what you love. It’s that simple.
We speak about love, and love, and love. But when it comes to grief: “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to be emotional.” And yet, to be full as individuals, we have to accept the full spectrum of our emotions - from love to grief. Hopefully we don’t get to a place where hate is involved, but we have to be content with the fact that our emotional life has range.
People ask me: “When are you going to do a book launch?” And I say, the idea of a book launch isn’t something I’m excited about. I’m excited about conversation about grief.
I’ve had a few small conversations with people already, and seeing grown men comfortable speaking about grief - that to me is much more powerful than a formal event. The book will have a life of its own now that it’s out. Whoever reads it will feel differently about it.
But the bottom line is: I share my own experience of going through grief, and how this has been a very powerful force in my own life.
I was twenty-two when my father passed away, and my father was a medical doctor. I started my career in HIV, tuberculosis and malaria - despite having studied economics and finance. When I look at the thread of my career, it makes sense.
My mother really wanted me to become a banker. But we never spoke about numbers when I was growing up, because she was a nurse. I grew up in the 1980s, and those years were HIV - there was a lot of conversation about helping people to live, and about people dying because nothing could be done. That’s how I grew up with that sense of care - how you care for somebody else, how you help somebody else.
So becoming a banker - yes, fine - I did end up in banking in 2016, and I’ve been in financial services for the past ten years, and now I’m moving into agriculture. And in a way, it feels like, for the first time professionally, I’m not doing what my parents were involved in or wanted for me - health and finance - and I’m moving into agriculture, which is completely different.
But these elements are still there. Care is still there. People are still there. Systems are still there.
So for me, the book is a celebration of the life I had from my parents, the grief I felt when they passed away, and most importantly an opportunity for anyone to feel: this is something we share, and we should feel comfortable expressing ourselves in a way that resonates and helps us heal.
Luca from BTG:
First of all, thank you for sharing that. It was deeply moving - especially the story about the man and his daughters. Do you see a connection between the book and your career in development?
Carl:
There is - because when you work in development, there are so many things you just cannot achieve. And you often feel powerless in the face of misery, poverty, illness.
I remember when I was working in Kinshasa - this was around 2007 or 2008 - I was very excited about being part of a large programme on HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. We travelled, and I met a woman who was HIV positive. I was proud of the fact that the programme provided treatment. That was my definition of success: access to treatment.
And then she said something that I can never forget. She said: “I am hungry.”
And I was confused, because I was young, and my definition of success was completely different from her need at that specific moment. The programme I was working on was only providing treatment. There was no nutrition component.
So you start to question, in that context, what “success” even means. On paper, the programme is achieving results - it is making the treatments available. But it is missing another part - something that, technically, another organisation is supposed to cover.
And I can never forget that moment, because I asked myself a very direct question: how useful am I to this woman? And how do I continue to be in a space where what I thought was successful - access to treatment - actually is not success at all, not for her.
There are moments in your life journey where your professional experience - fortunately or unfortunately - puts you in places where you realise you cannot fully support the people you are supposed to be supporting, at least not in the way they actually need.
And for me, that experience made me realise something fundamentally difficult to accept in the development space.
When I talk about grief, I’m also talking about grieving the inability to support somebody else - especially when it’s not a question of financial resources. This programme had a budget of around half a billion dollars over five years. But it didn’t have some elements that were essential to that woman’s reality.
It’s just one person, of course - but that one person has a family, she’s connected to many more people. And the story stayed with me because it was one of those moments early in your career where you realise that a problem is too big for one organisation to solve.
So the question becomes: how do we get to a place where we speak, coordinate, and collaborate - by listening to the voices of the people we say we’re going to help?
II. Private Philanthropy and the Architecture of Impact
Luca from BTG:
You have worked in the development sector for many years, from different angles - from the United Nations to private philanthropy. In your view, what sets private donors like Be That Girl apart in terms of strategy and the impact they can deliver?
Carl:
What I was excited about with Be That Girl is that it’s a long-term plan. The founders are genuinely interested in long-term investment, long-term impact - following where these young girls are progressing, and where they are going.
So it’s not one of those interventions where you come in, you do something, you’re happy with that, and you move on. It’s really a thought process: how do we leverage private capital - capital created in a different context - to support a generation of young girls to be the best they can be in a world that is changing very fast, and often in environments that are not necessarily on the radar.
If you think about the countries in Africa where most people focus, you can count them on your fingers. And then suddenly, you have a family that decides: a portion of the capital we have will be used in this space. Of course, there is a personal story and a connection. But the long-term view is what matters most to me.
They are applying what they know from private capital: how do you take a long-term investment approach? Here the returns are not financial returns. The returns are human lives you transform. The return is the ability for these young girls to think beyond the borders of what they thought was possible.
And I’m raising a young girl myself, so this is personal. She’s fortunate to have experienced different cities and different parts of the world at a very young age. And I often remind her: the first time I left Abidjan, where I was born, I was eighteen. It was 1996. That was the first time I travelled - by bus - to Bamako, Mali. The first time I was on a plane was from Bamako back home.
So you realise: the experience of growing up in a place you don’t choose - because it's the random nature of life - how do you imagine something outside it? You need people to help you think about these things.
Private donors have the ability, because they don’t have as many constraints, to look at: number one, what they believe in; number two, where the people or community they are trying to support are heading; and number three, how do you balance your aspirations as a donor with the reality in which those individuals operate?
And ultimately: what is the definition of success? Because success may not be what you think it is.
Success, in this context, could be one of these young women deciding that, with all the support she has received, the best place for her to build her life is still Zambia - and then becoming a reference point for other young women, showing them that this, too, can be a good life.
This is increasingly challenging today because the current generation has unprecedented access to technology. From almost anywhere in the world, young people can compare their lives, through a screen, with those of others who look like them or are the same age.
When we were growing up, this kind of comparison simply did not exist. People’s aspirations were shaped largely by their immediate environment. Today, young people can see many different lives and imagine themselves in any one of them.
The real challenge, then, is helping them understand context. The conditions that shape one life are not the same as those that shape another - and difference does not mean better.
So the question becomes: how do we support young women in developing their own definition of a good life, rooted in their own context? This is where private capital can play an important role - when it is deployed in a way that keeps returns as local as possible, while still opening minds to what could be.
Luca from BTG:
I think what you’ve just described is a testament to Be That Girl’s long view. But if we zoom out a little, between private donors and public institutions, what do you think are the main differences in terms of strategy and impact - particularly for girls and local communities? How does private intervention balance with public intervention?
Carl:
In principle, it’s the same view. The challenge is the capital you have access to - and how you can manoeuvre with that capital.
If you look at private donors, the board - if there is a board - more or less will be aligned on what makes sense. In larger organisations, you have many more members, many more stakeholders, and you have to find ways to keep as many people as satisfied as possible in order to drive a certain outcome. And that is challenging.
A lot of the challenges we face globally revolve around governance: how do you get governance structures that can sustain a long-term view, while the reality is that your budgeting cycle is often annual?
That’s an inherent structural challenge. Because if you don’t spend your budget within that year, you’ll be told: “Well, you don’t need the money.” But you may not be ready to spend it. And yet you don’t have the luxury of not spending it.
Having an explanation that is comfortable, that is good enough for you to retain that money - this is difficult, and it affects both private and public sectors, but it is often more rigid in large institutions.
Whereas from a private foundation perspective, you can look at the situation and say: “Okay, maybe we press pause. Maybe we figure out the best way to move.” So to me, it’s governance. It’s not that interests are misaligned. It’s that private donors have the flexibility that other bodies may not have, simply because of how the architecture is built.
Luca from BTG:
Staying with private philanthropy: what are the preconditions for this kind of philanthropy to do its best work?
Carl:
The first precondition is clarity - clarity about what success is meant to look like, combined with a genuine willingness to adapt to the conditions that exist within a given environment. In that sense, the mindset is not entirely different from that of an investor.
An investor may decide to support a company because they believe it will transform access to financial services. If, after launch, the product is not adopted, adjustments are made - or the investment is ultimately withdrawn.
When you are working in the social sector, however, you are dealing with human lives, and that fundamentally changes the stakes. From the outset, it is essential to be explicit about your theory of change, and about how that theory reflects the lived reality of the environment you are seeking to influence.
This is not a context in which experimentation can be treated lightly. The consequences are real and lasting. People do not have the opportunity to restart their lives. Education, in particular, follows a staged structure: reaching certain milestones at specific points in time is often necessary to progress. Delays may be overcome, but they make the path significantly more difficult.
The core requirement, therefore, is to be precise about the problem you are trying to address, to understand what the environment can realistically absorb in terms of change, and to retain the capacity to adapt as circumstances evolve.
As initial results emerge, they may align with expectations - or they may not. When they do not, robust monitoring and evaluation mechanisms become essential, enabling organisations to assess progress, redirect where necessary, and engage in honest dialogue with beneficiaries - the people they are ultimately seeking to support.
And you have to be comfortable saying: “We failed, and we’re going to adapt.”
That honesty - that even if I have all the money in the world, I do not have all the answers - is rare, but it’s important. Because on the other hand, people may not have all the financial resources they would like, but they have dignity. They can tell whether your intentions are sincere or whether this is something you are doing as a pastime.
You need that feedback loop that allows you to say: “My capital is not best used in this context, so I will redirect it.” You need to acknowledge when you were not able to succeed.
And you don’t leave people in the cold. You’re honest. You explain: “We have to rethink, redirect, and this may create challenges.” That’s a reality of life.
And we started talking about grief earlier - grief takes different forms. You might grieve the capital you lost. But the grief of the people who expected help and did not receive what they needed - and who may not have an alternative - that imbalance can only be resolved through open dialogue.
There is a limit to open dialogue, of course, but there must be that element of: “This is what we thought we could deliver. We didn’t arrive. Fine. But we’re not going to walk away and leave you in the cold.”
So: firstly, clarity on success and theory of change. Secondly, monitoring and evaluation - how are you going to track the impact of your investments? Thirdly, the ability to accept whether you are succeeding or failing - and then decide whether to exit, redirect, or rethink.
Luca from BTG:
The goal of Be That Girl is to help women lead self-determined lives. You’ve spent your career at the intersection of finance, policy, and development. From your perspective, what role does women’s economic agency play in making development sustainable?
Carl:
Let me give you an example I quote often.When I lived in Lomé, in Togo, there was a woman who came every morning with her son in the same corner of the street at the bottom of the block of flats I was staying at. She sold millet porridge. The boy would stay with his mother for a while, then go to school.
Watching that interaction reminded me of myself and my mother. My mother was a nurse, but from time to time she would bake cakes and sell them - either at the office or at school.
What that young boy - and what I - were learning from our mothers were lessons in entrepreneurship: lessons in managing supply chains, lessons in managing customers, lessons in managing money.
What we don’t do is recognise these as learnings. We have no way of accounting for that experience. And because we don’t account for it, we often misinterpret the role of women in economic development.
Very early on, I learned things simply by observing my mother - at the market, bargaining, negotiating. At the time, I couldn’t quantify what that was. She wasn’t using fancy terms like “supply chain management” or “financial education”, but that was the foundation.
So when I think about women’s economic agency, I think it is the foundation of economic development. Because most of us have been raised by our mothers. And the things we learn begin there - but society does not quantify it.
As a grown man today, observing my own household, I know: if my wife were not who she is, I would not be the professional I became. A stable home is what allows many men to succeed. I can’t quantify how much that is worth, but I know that my economic output is closely linked to that support structure.
Now scale that up to society: the work is helping women recognise and appreciate their own economic agency - not dependent on what men do, but focusing on how they are creating economic opportunities in communities.
Some women start from a roadside business and send their children to university to other parts of the world.
And there are documented examples like the Nana Benz in Togo - women who dominated the cloth trade in the 1970s and 1980s, so successful they drove Mercedes-Benz cars. Their economic value is well documented. But we don’t teach these stories widely.
So the work is not “empowering” women. I don’t like that word. Empowerment assumes you do not have power and I am going to give you power. No. The power already exists.
The issue is that society - often the other gender - needs to accept the role women already play, and we need to document it, teach it, and normalise it. We need to get to a place where we recognise what is already happening.
Luca from BTG:
So it’s also a matter of self-doubt and lack of representation that many women may have.
Carl:
Yes - exactly.
III. Why Be That Girl
Luca from BTG:
What attracted you most to dedicate some of your precious time to the mission of Be That Girl? And what potential do you see in the foundation’s work?
Carl:
In life, you need to make time for what you believe is an opportunity to contribute to something bigger and larger than yourself. Not everyone chooses to allocate time that way, but for me, that’s important.
I had been following this work from a distance for about five years. I looked at the consistency. I looked at the dedication. I knew the CEO. I saw the work that was visible online.
What attracted me most was the opportunity to see, at close range, how private capital - when deployed through a small, focused structure - can genuinely transform lives.
In large organisations, it is often difficult to observe how impact materialises in practice. Here, by contrast, the structure is intentionally lean, and the principals are directly involved. This is not a peripheral initiative; it is an organisation in which the deployment of capital is clearly aligned with the founders’ long-term values and sense of purpose.
Being part of that is both meaningful and instructive. It offers a concrete illustration of legacy and intergenerational stewardship - how knowledge, perspective, and responsibility are transmitted over time within a family-led initiative, supported by advisers and board members.
In that sense, the foundation also provides a compelling example of one dimension of a family enterprise: not commercial in nature, but governed with the same intentionality. The central question becomes how capital can be mobilised in a systematic and disciplined way to create long-term social impact. That combination is relatively rare, and it is what makes the experience distinctive.
Luca from BTG:
As Senior Advisor to Be That Girl, which specific gaps affecting girls and young women do you hope to address most?
Carl:
Gaps exist across many dimensions. In this context, the critical question is what creativity looks like in environments where individuals are often conditioned to follow predefined paths. The challenge is how to help someone assess the reality they are operating in - the institutions, the constraints - and still develop the confidence and imagination to see what is possible within those conditions.
I am a strong believer in working with what is available, rather than focusing exclusively on what is missing.
We often speak about “the Africa we want” - and that aspiration matters. But there is also “the Africa we have.” The real work begins with asking how we act meaningfully within that reality.
So you have young girls in Zambia. That’s what they have today. How do we help them imagine what it could be - starting from what is already there?
Of course, people say: “If we had all the resources in the world…” Not sure. But fundamentally, when I was in Abidjan in public schools, I did what I could with what I had, and life took a different turn.
This generation has access to far more information. Back then, your dreams were shaped by newspapers, parents, teachers. Everything else required imagination. Today, they can see it. They can visualise what they believe a good life is.
And unfortunately, for many people, that “best life” is never where they are. Because there’s a long list of things not working.
But in each one of those things not working, there’s an opportunity to create a solution. Let’s fix them. Let’s try to fix them. But do it without pointing fingers, without blaming others, because you never have the full context of why decisions were made when they were made.
So you can speculate about how bad things are, or you can decide: how do I use my energy to make progress, so that more people can follow?
Luca from BTG:
From your experience, what tends to be missing when organisations claim they are empowering women - or building women’s economic agency?
Carl:
Time. Time is what is most often missing. We are in a rush to see results, to demonstrate impact. And yet, as I mentioned earlier, meaningful change requires a long-term perspective. Some of the impact we are working towards, we may never see ourselves.
The effects of how a young woman is educated take time to unfold. What matters most, in the long run, are the values that are instilled along the way.
For me, one of those core values is curiosity: curiosity about one’s environment, the willingness to observe, to question, and to look for opportunities where others may only see constraints. Another is patience - the ability to work through challenges with the understanding that learning itself has value. And the third is perspective: asking how what you are doing today contributes to the generation that follows you.
If those values are in place, then even if someone does not become the most visibly successful person within a programme, what they have gained will prepare them for opportunities when they arise. Because opportunities rarely announce themselves in advance.
In my own case, after a professional transition last year, an opportunity emerged within a few months in a sector I had never formally worked in - agriculture. In hindsight, I can see that I had been preparing for that moment for many years without realising it. What mattered was not prior experience in the sector, but readiness.
This is the real question for me: how do we prepare women for opportunities that may not yet exist?
Organisations like Be That Girl will not always be present in someone’s life. But if a young woman lives with values, skills, and exposure, she is equipped to say: this is how I take agency over my own life.
Luca from BTG:
And how do you hope to support women through your new role at AGRA?
Carl:
Many smallholder farmers across the African continent are women. Transforming agriculture means thinking about the full value chain. How do we get more women involved in logistics? In marketing? How do we get more women involved in nutrition - so that what we have on the continent becomes better nutrition on people’s tables?
In a way, the women already in the sector are going to help me understand how best I bring my learnings from health, from financial inclusion, from other experiences, into this space.
The fundamental question for me now is: how do we reduce post-harvest loss, and how do we improve nutrition across the continent?
So I come into this saying: what do I need to learn from all the women already in this space, so that when I am sitting in certain rooms, I can tell the story of what will actually make their lives better?
To me, it’s the other way around. I don’t know much about agriculture. So I need to listen and learn, and then say: if we want to help these women, this is what I’m hearing consistently. It may not be perfect, but it’s consistent - so how do we make success possible for them?
IV. African Philanthropy and Systems
Luca from BTG:
As COO of the Ecobank Foundation, you worked with funding generated by businesses on the continent rather than relying on external donors. How do you see the role of African philanthropy in the future?
Carl:
African philanthropy has always existed - just as European philanthropy has always existed.
One major problem is structural: we are 54 different countries. If you are a billionaire in Togo and you want to invest in Cape Verde, there is no tax incentive to do so. The legal infrastructure doesn’t support cross-border philanthropy in the way Europe does.
So the infrastructure needs to be worked on. As a result, many African philanthropists do most of their giving within their own countries.
And also - there are philanthropists who are never labelled philanthropists. Someone in a rural or urban area who helps children go to school: are they called a philanthropist? Often not.
If you Google African philanthropists, you’ll see a handful of names - often people on Forbes lists. Fine. But what about those not on Forbes?
In the US, the largest philanthropic contributions come from individual donors. If you read giving reports, you’ll see that small, unrestricted donations - at scale - are huge. But you never hear about them because you can’t attach the story to one person.
And if you go back to Susu or Pamoja - pooled giving - these systems will never get labelled as philanthropy. But does that mean it doesn’t exist? Of course it exists. They just won’t get the label.
And then there’s another mismatch.
The model the world uses for philanthropy comes from industrialists - Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie. They created jobs, built a middle class. On the African continent, most wealth has come from services - telecoms, mining, banking. Those sectors do not create jobs at the same scale as industrialisation.
So you get a mismatch. In the US, philanthropy could become “passion projects” like libraries because the economic base was already built. In many African contexts, that stage was skipped. We didn’t industrialise at scale. We haven’t created enough people with resources to pay for basic things themselves.
So organisations like Be That Girl end up addressing issues that, in an ideal world, should not be on the agenda. But there is a gap.
It’s complex. The more you dig, the more complex it becomes.
V. Leadership and Mentorship
Luca from BTG:
Mentorship is a core pillar of Be That Girl’s work. Your own journey - from growing up in Abidjan to Harvard and other institutions - was extraordinary. Did you have mentors, and what role did they play?
Carl:
I call them good Samaritans.
In 2004, a gentleman named Lynden Morrison joined the Global Fund where I was. We worked together, and he said: “You have to go to Harvard for the Mid-Career Programme.”
If Lynden hadn’t told me, I would never have applied. Growing up in Abidjan, it’s francophone - the Anglo-Saxon world felt foreign. I had studied in South Africa and worked in Geneva, but I didn’t see Harvard for myself. He saw something in me that I didn’t see.
That’s what mentorship is: someone looks at you and says, “I think you can go there.” And then you have to do the work to fulfil that dream they put in your head. It doesn’t have to be Harvard. It can be anywhere. But someone needs to point in the direction.
I applied in 2004, but the minimum requirement was seven years’ experience. I got in in 2011. When I got my acceptance letter - 1 April 2011 - I was in Haiti. I called Lynden in Geneva. It was midnight. I told him: “Your dream was fulfilled.” It wasn’t my dream, because I never dreamt of going there.
Another example: a former colleague named Letitia Vellut saw an opportunity - the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Fellowship - on the last day of applications. She came to me and said: “Carl, I think this is for you.”
I needed three references on the last day. I called three people, they wrote the references immediately, and I submitted before the deadline. Then I forgot about it. Then I was selected and moved from Geneva to Addis Ababa.
If she hadn’t seen it and connected it to me, I would have missed it because I didn’t see it.
And for mentorship to work, you need to be vulnerable. You need to share your fears, your weaknesses, what you feel you can’t do - so someone can listen and still tell you: “I think you can get there.”
Luca from BTG:
Mentorship is often discussed, but unevenly delivered. What distinguishes mentorship that opens doors from mentorship that offers advice without access?
Carl:
A mentor cannot substitute themselves for the mentee. That’s not the job. You have honest, candid conversations about what you see and how you can help - but the ball is in the mentee’s court.
Let’s use a sports analogy. If you’re playing basketball, you have the ball - you need to score. To score, you need to learn how to dribble, how to handle the ball, how to attack, how to defend. You don’t become the best player overnight. Advice is only as good as you believing this is the direction you want to go. Otherwise it won’t work.
A mentor is not someone who leads you step by step or makes decisions on your behalf. Rather, a mentor helps you see possible directions and paths forward. From there, it is the individual’s responsibility to assess their own strengths, limitations, and willingness to invest the necessary effort, and to choose the path they will pursue.
Relationships are also fundamental to effective mentorship. The reason people were willing to provide references for me at very short notice was not coincidence. Those relationships were built over time and were not transactional in nature. I was not constantly asking for support; I had consistently delivered on my responsibilities. As a result, when the moment came to go the extra mile, they did so - because they understood that it mattered.
VI. Positioning Women to Lead
Luca from BTG:
What decisions must today’s leaders make if they are serious about positioning women to lead?
Carl:
It starts at home. It really starts at home. If you have a daughter, a niece, a goddaughter - any young woman in your circle - you must be intentional about supporting her to thrive. You can’t wait and hope it happens.
And we have to acknowledge: the world wasn’t designed for women to succeed. If you’re a leader, you have to counter that intentionally. When you see an opportunity to elevate a woman, you do it. Not to the detriment of boys - we have to ensure boys understand there is space for them too - but on equal footing.
I’m raising a boy and a girl. And that brings constant conversations about the importance of each person in society. There’s no: “She’s a girl, she can’t.” We help you become the best version of who you are - and when you are in that position, you do the same for others.
If leaders can make statements publicly but can’t do it in their own home, they’re missing the plot. Values start at home. Education starts at home. This is systemic change - not just statements on 8 March. And we’ve lived it. When we were in Ghana, my wife stopped working for two years to follow my development work.
We made a conscious decision for her to return to South Africa with the kids - for two reasons: to re-enter employment, and so the children could spend time with their only living grandparent.We explained it to the children as best we could. But we see the result today. A year later, she was employed again. We didn’t want a situation where a highly qualified chartered accountant stops her career indefinitely to follow “some guy” doing development work. It didn’t make sense.
That decision mattered.
VII. Looking Ahead
Luca from BTG:
When you look ahead twenty years, what role do you believe African women will play in shaping the continent’s economic future - and what must change now to make that possible?
Carl:
The first thing is how we tell the stories of African women. My late mother was a nurse. She spoke many local dialects. She was a powerful negotiator at the market. She ran a small business baking because she loved it.
But if I don’t tell you this today, you would never know.
And that is the point: we have to be intentional about telling our children the stories of African women in our societies. Until we give that narrative - of how African women have been powerful in transforming societies - we will continue to behave as if they don’t exist.
Think of Wangari Maathai in Kenya. She won the Nobel Peace Prize. She believed something had to be done and fought to protect Karura Forest. How many young African women or men know that story?
Think of Nadine Gordimer in South Africa - Nobel Prize in Literature. How many know that story?
Think of the Nana Benz women. How many young women understand the power those women held and what they did for society?
Our inability to demonstrate we have had generations of strong African women - in business, politics, philanthropy - is a disservice. Even in philanthropy: many women didn’t have millions of dollars, but many of my peers studied overseas because their mothers sold food by the side of the road. That’s real.
But it’s not documented in the way the world recognises “success”. It’s not recognised as philanthropy because it doesn’t fit the category.
And that brings me back to labels.
So much of women’s work is placed in the box of “informal”. And once you are “informal”, you don’t count - you don’t exist. The label itself becomes a form of exclusion.
If you remove the label and look at the activity, what are women doing? They are trading. They are moving goods from rural areas into cities. They are running supply chains. They are building local economies. But because it sits in the “informal” category, it is often ignored.
So yes - what must change is recognition. Documentation. Narrative. Teaching these stories. Making it visible that it is already happening.
Luca from BTG:
Financial access is often closely tied to informality. When work is informal, it can mean cash-based systems, limited bank access, and fewer pathways into the formal financial system. From your perspective, how does financial inclusion strengthen women’s economic agency?
Carl:
Let me give you a very practical example. Have you heard of susu or pamoja?
It’s a simple system. Ten women come together. Each month, each one contributes ten dollars. That creates a pool of one hundred dollars. In month one, one person receives it. In month two, another person receives it. Over ten months, each one receives that capital.
That is an economic system. It is built on trust, like any financial system. It is built on discipline - contributing your share consistently. And it is built on access to capital. But because it is informal, we don’t recognise it as part of the financial inclusion journey. Some people try to digitise it, but the fundamentals already exist.
That’s why mobile money became so successful. It mimicked existing behaviour. People were already exchanging airtime and data as a proxy for value. Mobile money simply replaced that with cash value. I’m waiting for the day it becomes interoperable like SMS. I remember the day when I could send an SMS across borders from South Africa to Côte d’Ivoire. That changed everything. It was cheaper. It meant you could stay better connected.
So the power of financial inclusion is the ability to mimic behaviours people already have, and then build the architecture around that. Not the other way around. Otherwise, you’re selling a solution that requires people to change behaviour.Financial access already exists. What we need to improve is sophistication - based on what people already do.
Fintech can help, because it can make things easier to understand. There are cost issues, but everything has a price. We just need the right price point.
VIII. Closing
Luca from BTG:
As a final question to close our conversation: is there a book you would recommend?
Carl:
There are many books that have shaped me over time, but one that comes to mind is The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck.
Luca from BTG:
The Road Less Travelled. That feels like a fitting way to end this conversation.
Carl:
It is. In many ways, it reflects the journey - both personal and professional - that we’ve been talking about.
Luca from BTG:
Carl, thank you - on behalf of Be That Girl - for this conversation. And thank you for joining our Advisory Board. We’re deeply grateful for your time, your reflections, and your commitment to the foundation’s mission.
Carl:
Thank you. It’s an honour to be part of the journey.